1 00:00:01,650 --> 00:00:04,550 {\an1}(radio static crackles, intermittent beeping) 2 00:00:05,420 --> 00:00:10,550 ♪ 3 00:00:17,050 --> 00:00:19,950 (waves crashing) 4 00:00:19,980 --> 00:00:22,450 NARRATOR: In March of 1942, 5 00:00:22,480 --> 00:00:28,220 German U-boats prowled the vast Atlantic Ocean in wolf packs, 6 00:00:28,250 --> 00:00:30,226 attacking scores of Allied transport ships 7 00:00:30,250 --> 00:00:32,350 {\an1}as they headed towards war-torn Europe. 8 00:00:32,380 --> 00:00:34,380 {\an1}(mechanical whirring) 9 00:00:34,420 --> 00:00:35,920 {\an1}(torpedo releasing) 10 00:00:37,950 --> 00:00:39,350 (explosion) 11 00:00:39,380 --> 00:00:40,680 {\an1}In less than three months, 12 00:00:40,720 --> 00:00:44,750 {\an1}the Nazi submarines had sunk more than a million tons 13 00:00:44,780 --> 00:00:47,120 {\an1}of desperately needed supplies 14 00:00:47,150 --> 00:00:51,320 and killed thousands of soldiers. 15 00:00:51,350 --> 00:00:54,680 {\an1}The U-boat captains had a secret weapon... 16 00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:58,520 {\an1}encrypted messages sent by Nazi spies in South America 17 00:00:58,550 --> 00:01:00,680 {\an1}had provided them with the coordinates 18 00:01:00,720 --> 00:01:02,950 {\an1}of the targeted ships. 19 00:01:02,980 --> 00:01:04,756 {\an7}ROSE MARY SHELDON: We're talking about networks 20 00:01:04,780 --> 00:01:06,680 {\an7}all over South America, 21 00:01:06,720 --> 00:01:10,650 {\an7}an entire front in the Second World War. 22 00:01:10,680 --> 00:01:13,520 {\an8}NARRATOR: But America had on its side 23 00:01:13,550 --> 00:01:15,956 {\an7}one of the most skilled codebreakers in the world... 24 00:01:15,980 --> 00:01:17,250 {\an7}Elizebeth Friedman. 25 00:01:17,280 --> 00:01:20,920 DAVID HATCH: She was a suburban mom. 26 00:01:20,950 --> 00:01:24,120 {\an1}Nothing really to mark her as anything unusual. 27 00:01:24,150 --> 00:01:27,820 {\an1}But she lived a double life. 28 00:01:27,850 --> 00:01:30,550 NARRATOR: In World War I, Friedman had trained 29 00:01:30,580 --> 00:01:34,050 {\an1}the first team of codebreakers for the U.S. military. 30 00:01:34,080 --> 00:01:36,780 {\an1}During Prohibition, she had taken on 31 00:01:36,820 --> 00:01:38,756 {\an1}the most powerful gangsters in the country 32 00:01:38,780 --> 00:01:39,880 and brought down 33 00:01:39,920 --> 00:01:42,750 an international rum-running operation. 34 00:01:42,780 --> 00:01:44,380 BARBARA OSTEIKA: The gangsters 35 00:01:44,420 --> 00:01:45,680 {\an1}put a hit out on Elizebeth, 36 00:01:45,720 --> 00:01:50,180 {\an1}and the Coast Guard puts a protection detail on her. 37 00:01:50,220 --> 00:01:51,796 NARRATOR: Now, as she decrypted 38 00:01:51,820 --> 00:01:53,920 {\an1}the intercepted messages on her desk, 39 00:01:53,950 --> 00:01:57,220 {\an1}she knew everything she had learned in her career 40 00:01:57,250 --> 00:01:59,520 {\an1}had led to this moment. 41 00:01:59,550 --> 00:02:01,556 {\an1}AMY BUTLER GREENFIELD: She was somebody who had 42 00:02:01,580 --> 00:02:05,980 {\an1}the ability to see beyond what most other people could. 43 00:02:06,020 --> 00:02:11,320 {\an1}She could see things startingto unlock in front of her eyes. 44 00:02:11,350 --> 00:02:12,820 NARRATOR: She was one woman 45 00:02:12,850 --> 00:02:14,220 {\an1}fighting a secret army. 46 00:02:14,250 --> 00:02:17,920 {\an1}Her success or failure could determine 47 00:02:17,950 --> 00:02:19,650 {\an1}the outcome of the war. 48 00:02:19,680 --> 00:02:21,426 JASON FAGONE: Elizebeth Friedman was 49 00:02:21,450 --> 00:02:25,850 {\an1}a code-breaking Quaker poet who hunted Nazi spies, 50 00:02:25,880 --> 00:02:29,620 {\an1}and there's nobody like her then or since. 51 00:02:49,950 --> 00:02:56,850 {\an7}(car horns honking, trolley clanking) 52 00:02:56,880 --> 00:03:02,050 {\an8}♪ 53 00:03:16,420 --> 00:03:18,526 {\an8}NARRATOR: Elizebeth Smith Friedman's life 54 00:03:18,550 --> 00:03:21,150 {\an7}was unexpectedly set on course 55 00:03:21,180 --> 00:03:25,320 {\an7}during a visit to the bustling city of Chicago in 1916. 56 00:03:25,350 --> 00:03:30,180 {\an7}Twenty-three and full of dreams, she was hoping to escape 57 00:03:30,220 --> 00:03:33,780 the life she had been raised to expect. 58 00:03:33,820 --> 00:03:35,250 FAGONE: Elizebeth came from 59 00:03:35,280 --> 00:03:39,320 {\an1}a large Quaker family in small-town Indiana, 60 00:03:39,350 --> 00:03:45,180 {\an1}and from a very young age, she felt like she didn't fit in. 61 00:03:45,220 --> 00:03:47,320 {\an7}She even hated her own name. 62 00:03:47,350 --> 00:03:50,380 {\an8}She called it "the odious name Smith." 63 00:03:50,420 --> 00:03:53,320 And she hated it because she believed that 64 00:03:53,350 --> 00:03:55,020 {\an1}whenever she was introduced 65 00:03:55,050 --> 00:03:57,820 as Miss Smith, she would be seen as 66 00:03:57,850 --> 00:03:59,850 {\an1}something so ordinary, 67 00:03:59,880 --> 00:04:01,720 and she didn't want to be ordinary, 68 00:04:01,750 --> 00:04:03,680 she wanted to be extraordinary. 69 00:04:03,720 --> 00:04:06,150 She wanted an adventurous life. 70 00:04:06,180 --> 00:04:10,520 ♪ 71 00:04:10,550 --> 00:04:12,120 NARRATOR: Her mother, Sopha, 72 00:04:12,150 --> 00:04:14,250 {\an1}had delivered ten children, 73 00:04:14,280 --> 00:04:18,020 the first when she was only 17. 74 00:04:18,050 --> 00:04:23,480 {\an1}Elizebeth, born in 1892, was the youngest. 75 00:04:23,520 --> 00:04:26,280 FAGONE: Elizebeth often felt pity for her, 76 00:04:26,320 --> 00:04:30,250 {\an1}because Sopha's life had been completely overtaken, 77 00:04:30,280 --> 00:04:34,020 {\an1}it seemed to Elizebeth, bychildbearing and child rearing. 78 00:04:34,050 --> 00:04:36,650 {\an1}She didn't seem to be able to 79 00:04:36,680 --> 00:04:40,080 {\an1}pursue any kind of life of the mind, and to Elizebeth 80 00:04:40,120 --> 00:04:41,620 {\an1}that was horrifying, 81 00:04:41,650 --> 00:04:44,150 {\an1}because Elizebeth was a very bookish kid. 82 00:04:44,180 --> 00:04:47,320 {\an1}She loved to read, she loved poetry. 83 00:04:47,350 --> 00:04:50,780 {\an1}She wrote her own poetry. 84 00:04:50,820 --> 00:04:54,850 GREENFIELD: Her father was a Civil War veteran. 85 00:04:54,880 --> 00:04:59,920 {\an1}He saw his youngest as a difficult child, 86 00:04:59,950 --> 00:05:03,980 {\an1}and their relationship absolutely was difficult. 87 00:05:04,020 --> 00:05:06,580 {\an7}Her father did not support her going to college. 88 00:05:06,620 --> 00:05:08,420 {\an8}He was against further education, 89 00:05:08,450 --> 00:05:09,420 {\an7}particularly for women. 90 00:05:09,450 --> 00:05:13,980 She manages to talk him into this, 91 00:05:14,020 --> 00:05:18,580 {\an1}and he says she can have the money, but at 6% interest. 92 00:05:18,620 --> 00:05:21,850 {\an1}She has to pay it all back. 93 00:05:23,880 --> 00:05:25,396 NARRATOR: In college, Elizebeth studied. 94 00:05:25,420 --> 00:05:28,150 {\an1}Greek and English literature. 95 00:05:28,180 --> 00:05:31,180 {\an1}When she discovered Shakespeare, she became fascinated 96 00:05:31,220 --> 00:05:33,620 {\an1}by the intricacies of language, 97 00:05:33,650 --> 00:05:37,580 {\an1}sparking a passion that would drive her ambitions. 98 00:05:39,850 --> 00:05:41,920 {\an1}After graduation, Elizebeth pursued one 99 00:05:41,950 --> 00:05:45,350 {\an1}of the few careers available to women at the time 100 00:05:45,380 --> 00:05:50,550 {\an1}and accepted a teaching job at a small Indiana school. 101 00:05:50,580 --> 00:05:52,050 {\an1}She found the work uninspiring, 102 00:05:52,080 --> 00:05:57,220 {\an1}and quit after just a year. 103 00:05:57,250 --> 00:06:00,550 In June of 1916, she headed for Chicago 104 00:06:00,580 --> 00:06:03,680 {\an1}in search of a new job. 105 00:06:03,720 --> 00:06:07,050 {\an1}After a week of effort, she found nothing. 106 00:06:07,080 --> 00:06:08,750 {\an1}(trolley bell chimes) 107 00:06:08,780 --> 00:06:11,850 With no income and no job prospects, 108 00:06:11,880 --> 00:06:16,020 {\an1}Elizebeth had no choice but to return home in defeat. 109 00:06:16,050 --> 00:06:19,950 {\an1}On her last day in the city, she indulged in a visit 110 00:06:19,980 --> 00:06:23,750 {\an1}to the Newberry Library to see a rare treasure... 111 00:06:23,780 --> 00:06:28,520 {\an1}Shakespeare's first folio, printed in 1623. 112 00:06:28,550 --> 00:06:31,750 FAGONE: She's looking at this book of Shakespeare. 113 00:06:31,780 --> 00:06:35,020 {\an1}And the librarian notices and says, 114 00:06:35,050 --> 00:06:37,720 {\an1}"You're interested in Shakespeare, aren't you?" 115 00:06:37,750 --> 00:06:40,450 {\an1}And Elizebeth says, "Well, yes." 116 00:06:40,480 --> 00:06:41,880 {\an1}And the librarian says, 117 00:06:41,920 --> 00:06:45,050 {\an1}"You know, it's funny, there's an odd, wealthy man 118 00:06:45,080 --> 00:06:46,626 {\an1}"who keeps coming to the library, 119 00:06:46,650 --> 00:06:48,350 {\an1}"and he's looking for somebody 120 00:06:48,380 --> 00:06:49,956 {\an1}"to help him with this project, 121 00:06:49,980 --> 00:06:51,180 {\an1}"to find some kind of secret 122 00:06:51,220 --> 00:06:53,220 that he thinks is hidden in this book." 123 00:06:54,950 --> 00:06:56,250 NARRATOR: An hour later, 124 00:06:56,280 --> 00:06:58,980 {\an1}George Fabyan was standing at her table. 125 00:06:59,020 --> 00:07:03,380 {\an1}At 6'4", 250 pounds, 126 00:07:03,420 --> 00:07:07,820 {\an1}the wealthy industrialist towered over her. 127 00:07:07,850 --> 00:07:09,796 FAGONE: He walks right up to Elizebeth 128 00:07:09,820 --> 00:07:12,420 {\an1}and the first thing he says to her is, 129 00:07:12,450 --> 00:07:14,226 {\an1}"Would you like to come out to Riverbank 130 00:07:14,250 --> 00:07:16,150 {\an1}and spend the night with me?" 131 00:07:16,180 --> 00:07:18,180 She has no idea what to say to this. 132 00:07:18,220 --> 00:07:19,550 It's the most indelicate question 133 00:07:19,580 --> 00:07:20,790 that anyone has ever posed to her. 134 00:07:20,820 --> 00:07:22,920 And he grabs her under the elbow, 135 00:07:22,950 --> 00:07:24,320 lifts her up... 136 00:07:24,350 --> 00:07:26,020 {\an1}she's tiny, he's huge... 137 00:07:26,050 --> 00:07:28,580 {\an1}and he frog marches her out the door 138 00:07:28,620 --> 00:07:30,520 {\an1}to a waiting limousine, 139 00:07:30,550 --> 00:07:32,720 {\an1}which takes them to the railway station. 140 00:07:36,880 --> 00:07:39,020 {\an1}(train clattering on track) 141 00:07:43,420 --> 00:07:47,050 (birds chirping) 142 00:07:47,080 --> 00:07:48,796 NARRATOR: Soon, Elizebeth was wandering 143 00:07:48,820 --> 00:07:52,180 {\an1}the grounds of Fabyan's vast Riverbank estate, 144 00:07:52,220 --> 00:07:54,180 {\an1}nestled on 350 acres 145 00:07:54,220 --> 00:07:59,620 {\an1}of rolling hills in Geneva, Illinois. 146 00:07:59,650 --> 00:08:02,680 {\an1}Strolling the Japanese garden, 147 00:08:02,720 --> 00:08:06,120 {\an1}she was filled with a mix of astonishment and curiosity 148 00:08:06,150 --> 00:08:10,250 {\an1}about the tycoon's eccentric kingdom. 149 00:08:10,280 --> 00:08:12,026 FAGONE: George Fabyan had so much money 150 00:08:12,050 --> 00:08:15,120 {\an1}that he could do essentially anything that he wanted. 151 00:08:15,150 --> 00:08:18,480 {\an1}And what he wanted to do was 152 00:08:18,520 --> 00:08:21,680 {\an1}to build a playground for science. 153 00:08:21,720 --> 00:08:22,920 {\an1}He would go out and hire 154 00:08:22,950 --> 00:08:25,180 {\an1}some of the leading scientists of the day, 155 00:08:25,220 --> 00:08:26,350 {\an1}bring them to Riverbank, 156 00:08:26,380 --> 00:08:29,020 {\an1}essentially collecting these scientists, 157 00:08:29,050 --> 00:08:33,220 {\an7}and he would set them looseand tell them to be spectacular, 158 00:08:33,250 --> 00:08:34,326 {\an7}tell them to make breakthroughs, 159 00:08:34,350 --> 00:08:36,750 {\an8}tell them to unlock the secrets of nature. 160 00:08:39,480 --> 00:08:42,496 NARRATOR: What captured most of Fabyan's attention, however, 161 00:08:42,520 --> 00:08:44,950 {\an1}was a literary project focused on proving 162 00:08:44,980 --> 00:08:47,450 {\an1}that the works of William Shakespeare 163 00:08:47,480 --> 00:08:49,620 {\an1}had been written by another author... 164 00:08:49,650 --> 00:08:53,980 {\an1}the Elizabethan philosopher and scientist, Francis Bacon. 165 00:08:54,020 --> 00:08:56,650 VINCE HOUGHTON: Fabyan had this belief 166 00:08:56,680 --> 00:08:59,820 {\an1}that William Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare. 167 00:08:59,850 --> 00:09:03,580 {\an1}That actually Francis Bacon had written a code 168 00:09:03,620 --> 00:09:07,320 {\an7}within the Shakespearean plays that demonstrated that. 169 00:09:07,350 --> 00:09:09,496 {\an7}Shakespeare was not the author, that Bacon actually was. 170 00:09:09,520 --> 00:09:13,320 NARRATOR: Fabyan assigned Elizebeth the job of ferreting out 171 00:09:13,350 --> 00:09:18,580 the secret messages he believedBacon had implanted in the text. 172 00:09:18,620 --> 00:09:20,520 {\an1}Excited by the challenge, 173 00:09:20,550 --> 00:09:23,350 {\an1}she first had to master a method of encoding messages 174 00:09:23,380 --> 00:09:26,920 {\an1}invented by Francis Bacon in 1623. 175 00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:30,980 {\an1}In the Bacon system, each letter of the alphabet 176 00:09:31,020 --> 00:09:34,220 {\an1}was assigned a combination of the letters A and B, 177 00:09:34,250 --> 00:09:36,350 {\an1}in groups of five. 178 00:09:37,650 --> 00:09:38,726 HOUGHTON: Essentially what he did 179 00:09:38,750 --> 00:09:40,326 is he said, "Okay, I'm going to take 180 00:09:40,350 --> 00:09:42,196 {\an1}"every letter of the alphabet and break it down 181 00:09:42,220 --> 00:09:45,420 {\an1}into a binary system of As and Bs." 182 00:09:45,450 --> 00:09:50,350 {\an1}The letter A would turn into five As, A-A-A-A-A. 183 00:09:50,380 --> 00:09:52,820 {\an1}The letter B was A-A-A-A-B. 184 00:09:52,850 --> 00:09:55,020 {\an1}The letter C and so on. 185 00:09:55,050 --> 00:09:57,256 {\an1}This can be represented any way you wanted to, 186 00:09:57,280 --> 00:09:59,650 {\an1}as long as there's two different things 187 00:09:59,680 --> 00:10:01,980 {\an1}you're using to represent the binary system. 188 00:10:02,020 --> 00:10:05,480 And this is what the legend was... 189 00:10:05,520 --> 00:10:09,180 That the first Shakespeare folio had this code written 190 00:10:09,220 --> 00:10:12,950 in two different typefaces throughout. 191 00:10:14,920 --> 00:10:15,990 NARRATOR: Once the differences 192 00:10:16,020 --> 00:10:17,696 in the typeface were identified, 193 00:10:17,720 --> 00:10:20,920 and the letters sorted into clusters of five, 194 00:10:20,950 --> 00:10:24,020 a hidden message would be revealed. 195 00:10:27,180 --> 00:10:30,820 ♪ 196 00:10:32,120 --> 00:10:34,680 {\an1}The work was tedious, but Elizebeth discovered 197 00:10:34,720 --> 00:10:38,020 {\an1}she had the patience to stare at characters on a page 198 00:10:38,050 --> 00:10:40,350 {\an1}for hours on end. 199 00:10:40,380 --> 00:10:42,196 FAGONE: What Elizebeth was required to do 200 00:10:42,220 --> 00:10:45,520 was peer through a magnifying glass 201 00:10:45,550 --> 00:10:48,180 {\an1}and try to discern very subtle variations 202 00:10:48,220 --> 00:10:51,980 in the fonts on photographic enlargements 203 00:10:52,020 --> 00:10:55,150 {\an1}of Shakespeare's plays. 204 00:10:55,180 --> 00:10:57,526 {\an1}And that was how she was going to break the code 205 00:10:57,550 --> 00:11:00,180 {\an1}and rewrite the history of English literature. 206 00:11:00,750 --> 00:11:04,050 ♪ 207 00:11:04,080 --> 00:11:06,096 NARRATOR: Her work with the Shakespeare manuscripts 208 00:11:06,120 --> 00:11:08,626 {\an1}would bring her together with the young man who was 209 00:11:08,650 --> 00:11:12,080 {\an1}photographing and enlarging the Shakespeare texts, 210 00:11:12,120 --> 00:11:14,220 {\an1}William Friedman. 211 00:11:14,250 --> 00:11:17,050 Genetics was his field of expertise. 212 00:11:17,080 --> 00:11:19,980 {\an1}Photography was his hobby. 213 00:11:20,020 --> 00:11:23,850 At Riverbank, he easily stood out. 214 00:11:23,880 --> 00:11:26,720 SHELDON: William always wore a white starched shirt, 215 00:11:26,750 --> 00:11:29,556 which in that heat, I don't knowhow he didn't perspire to death 216 00:11:29,580 --> 00:11:33,220 {\an1}but he always looked very together, very cool. 217 00:11:33,250 --> 00:11:35,650 {\an7}His hair was always combed perfectly. 218 00:11:35,680 --> 00:11:37,575 {\an8}This was a man who knew how to dress. 219 00:11:39,080 --> 00:11:42,250 ♪ 220 00:11:42,280 --> 00:11:45,620 FAGONE: There are a lot of photos of just Elizebeth 221 00:11:45,650 --> 00:11:47,680 {\an1}and you can tell that William 222 00:11:47,720 --> 00:11:52,220 {\an1}is gazing down at his camera into the glass 223 00:11:52,250 --> 00:11:56,180 {\an1}and seeing an image of her and probably smiling. 224 00:11:56,220 --> 00:11:59,120 {\an1}She was unlike anyone he had ever met. 225 00:11:59,150 --> 00:12:03,020 {\an1}He was very quickly falling in love. 226 00:12:04,950 --> 00:12:08,020 NARRATOR: The couple were an unlikely match... 227 00:12:08,050 --> 00:12:10,420 She was a Quaker from the Midwest 228 00:12:10,450 --> 00:12:12,980 {\an1}and he was a Jewish immigrant from Russia. 229 00:12:13,020 --> 00:12:15,750 HATCH: Late in his life, 230 00:12:15,780 --> 00:12:18,380 {\an1}one of William Friedman's colleagues 231 00:12:18,420 --> 00:12:22,120 {\an8}asked him how he got into cryptology. 232 00:12:22,150 --> 00:12:23,580 {\an7}According to the story, 233 00:12:23,620 --> 00:12:25,496 {\an7}he had a sly smile on his face and he said, 234 00:12:25,520 --> 00:12:28,780 "I was seduced." 235 00:12:33,980 --> 00:12:36,880 NARRATOR: Working across from each other day by day, 236 00:12:36,920 --> 00:12:38,696 {\an1}they began digging into Fabyan's collection 237 00:12:38,720 --> 00:12:44,420 {\an1}of codebreaking books, exchanging insights and ideas. 238 00:12:44,450 --> 00:12:47,880 HOUGHTON: And so Elizebeth was able to bring William into the fold 239 00:12:47,920 --> 00:12:49,756 {\an1}and say, "Look, you can take your very mathematical", 240 00:12:49,780 --> 00:12:52,650 {\an1}"scientific approach tounderstanding codes and ciphers, 241 00:12:52,680 --> 00:12:54,550 {\an1}"I can bring my poetry 242 00:12:54,580 --> 00:12:56,520 {\an1}"and language skills, 243 00:12:56,550 --> 00:12:59,520 and together we'll be unstoppable." 244 00:12:59,550 --> 00:13:01,656 NARRATOR: As they began to master rudimentary skills, 245 00:13:01,680 --> 00:13:03,750 {\an1}however, they saw little indication 246 00:13:03,780 --> 00:13:08,120 {\an1}of embedded codes in the Shakespeare manuscripts. 247 00:13:08,150 --> 00:13:09,380 {\an1}Every now and then, 248 00:13:09,420 --> 00:13:12,620 {\an1}there will be a letter that is slightly different. 249 00:13:12,650 --> 00:13:14,850 {\an1}Now, it could be just because 250 00:13:14,880 --> 00:13:17,520 {\an1}the way the typeface struck the paper. 251 00:13:17,550 --> 00:13:20,450 There might be a little tail off a letter 252 00:13:20,480 --> 00:13:23,280 {\an1}or a letter might be a little wider. 253 00:13:23,320 --> 00:13:27,220 {\an1}They're random marks and they can be made by any typesetter, 254 00:13:27,250 --> 00:13:29,820 {\an1}especially back in the 16th century, 255 00:13:29,850 --> 00:13:32,420 {\an1}and so they're really rather meaningless. 256 00:13:32,450 --> 00:13:34,950 {\an1}Now they both agreed that 257 00:13:34,980 --> 00:13:38,380 {\an1}the central project at Riverbank had no scientific validity. 258 00:13:38,420 --> 00:13:40,526 {\an1}It was all a pipe dream, it was a kind of delusion. 259 00:13:40,550 --> 00:13:44,480 NARRATOR: Disheartened by their revelation, 260 00:13:44,520 --> 00:13:48,020 {\an1}they saw no future in codebreaking. 261 00:13:48,050 --> 00:13:52,580 {\an1}Still, they saw a future with each other. 262 00:13:52,620 --> 00:13:54,480 In May of 1917, 263 00:13:54,520 --> 00:13:56,950 {\an1}Elizebeth and William stole away from Riverbank 264 00:13:56,980 --> 00:14:00,250 {\an1}to get married in Chicago. 265 00:14:00,280 --> 00:14:03,220 FAGONE: William's family was shocked 266 00:14:03,250 --> 00:14:05,180 {\an1}and appalled by the marriage. 267 00:14:05,220 --> 00:14:08,850 {\an1}They wanted to see him marry a Jewish woman. 268 00:14:08,880 --> 00:14:10,550 {\an1}His brother later said that 269 00:14:10,580 --> 00:14:12,996 {\an1}if William had been living in Pittsburgh at the time, 270 00:14:13,020 --> 00:14:16,320 {\an1}in the close-knit Jewish community there, 271 00:14:16,350 --> 00:14:18,850 {\an1}he would have been exiled. 272 00:14:18,880 --> 00:14:20,480 {\an1}The two of them go ahead, 273 00:14:20,520 --> 00:14:23,550 {\an1}and despite the differences in their background, 274 00:14:23,580 --> 00:14:26,950 {\an1}despite the family opposition, despite the lack of money, 275 00:14:26,980 --> 00:14:28,420 {\an1}despite all the many reasons 276 00:14:28,450 --> 00:14:33,150 {\an1}why they should not get married, they do. 277 00:14:33,180 --> 00:14:34,350 NARRATOR: The newlyweds hoped 278 00:14:34,380 --> 00:14:38,080 {\an1}to start a new life away from Riverbank. 279 00:14:38,120 --> 00:14:43,220 {\an1}World events, however, would upend their plans. 280 00:14:44,920 --> 00:14:46,926 {\an1}A month before they wed, the United States 281 00:14:46,950 --> 00:14:50,820 {\an1}had entered the "Great War" in Europe... 282 00:14:50,850 --> 00:14:53,280 {\an7}a war unlike anything that had come before, 283 00:14:53,320 --> 00:14:55,020 {\an7}in part because of 284 00:14:55,050 --> 00:14:56,090 {\an7}the invention of the radio. 285 00:14:56,120 --> 00:14:57,720 (static buzzes) 286 00:14:57,750 --> 00:15:02,350 {\an7}Suddenly, the air was full of messages relaying information 287 00:15:02,380 --> 00:15:06,620 {\an7}that could win or lose a battle, destroy a regiment, 288 00:15:06,650 --> 00:15:08,520 {\an7}or sink a ship... (radio beeping) 289 00:15:08,550 --> 00:15:09,556 {\an1}All of it easily intercepted 290 00:15:09,580 --> 00:15:12,220 {\an1}by anyone with an antenna. 291 00:15:12,250 --> 00:15:14,320 FAGONE: The invention of radio 292 00:15:14,350 --> 00:15:17,720 {\an1}completely transformed the value of codebreaking. 293 00:15:17,750 --> 00:15:19,220 {\an1}(explosion echoes) 294 00:15:19,250 --> 00:15:21,050 So it put an incredible premium 295 00:15:21,080 --> 00:15:25,050 on cryptography, on strong codes and ciphers, 296 00:15:25,080 --> 00:15:29,420 because now that those messages were flying through the air, 297 00:15:29,450 --> 00:15:31,880 {\an1}they had to be protected. 298 00:15:31,920 --> 00:15:33,526 {\an1}The problem for America is that 299 00:15:33,550 --> 00:15:36,350 {\an1}on the eve of World War I, the United States 300 00:15:36,380 --> 00:15:41,480 {\an1}was completely unprepared to break codes in the war. 301 00:15:41,520 --> 00:15:42,556 HOUGHTON: The United States 302 00:15:42,580 --> 00:15:45,720 {\an1}had no code-breaking agency or bureau 303 00:15:45,750 --> 00:15:47,780 {\an1}in the United States military. 304 00:15:47,820 --> 00:15:48,920 {\an1}It just didn't exist. 305 00:15:48,950 --> 00:15:52,720 {\an1}There was no NSA, there was C.I.A., 306 00:15:52,750 --> 00:15:55,880 {\an1}the military branches had their own 307 00:15:55,920 --> 00:15:57,980 very, very small intelligence agencies. 308 00:15:58,020 --> 00:15:59,626 We're talking about dozens of people, 309 00:15:59,650 --> 00:16:02,180 not thousands, in this case. 310 00:16:02,220 --> 00:16:05,720 NARRATOR: At Riverbank, George Fabyan saw 311 00:16:05,750 --> 00:16:08,280 an opportunity to serve his country 312 00:16:08,320 --> 00:16:10,780 {\an1}and to enhance his reputation. 313 00:16:10,820 --> 00:16:12,020 He established 314 00:16:12,050 --> 00:16:15,750 {\an1}the first dedicated codebreaking unit in America 315 00:16:15,780 --> 00:16:17,750 {\an1}and, much to their disbelief, 316 00:16:17,780 --> 00:16:21,650 {\an1}placed Elizebeth and William in charge. 317 00:16:21,680 --> 00:16:25,350 {\an1}Soon, the War, Navy, State, and Justice Departments 318 00:16:25,380 --> 00:16:27,720 {\an1}were sending thousands of secret messages 319 00:16:27,750 --> 00:16:30,750 {\an1}to Riverbank for decryption. 320 00:16:30,780 --> 00:16:32,626 HOUGHTON: So, William and Elizebeth Friedman 321 00:16:32,650 --> 00:16:35,096 {\an1}at this point hadn't really done this systematically 322 00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:36,350 for very long. 323 00:16:36,380 --> 00:16:37,826 {\an1}They'd kind of played with it a little bit. 324 00:16:37,850 --> 00:16:41,020 {\an1}But all of a sudden, they're being asked to break codes 325 00:16:41,050 --> 00:16:44,350 {\an1}for the United States military in a world war. 326 00:16:44,380 --> 00:16:45,750 {\an1}Talk about on-the-job training, 327 00:16:45,780 --> 00:16:48,980 {\an1}this is as deep as on-the-job training gets. 328 00:16:49,020 --> 00:16:51,780 (cipher ticking) 329 00:16:51,820 --> 00:16:53,156 NARRATOR: The couple scrambled to expand 330 00:16:53,180 --> 00:16:55,580 their knowledge of codebreaking: 331 00:16:55,620 --> 00:16:58,580 Starting with the most fundamental concepts, 332 00:16:58,620 --> 00:17:02,950 {\an1}like the difference between a cipher and a code. 333 00:17:02,980 --> 00:17:06,420 HOUGHTON: A code is when you take a word or even a phrase 334 00:17:06,450 --> 00:17:09,720 {\an1}and you replace it with another word or a phrase. 335 00:17:09,750 --> 00:17:12,620 {\an1}So if we have the word "gun," we might say 336 00:17:12,650 --> 00:17:14,156 {\an1}every place the word "gun" is, 337 00:17:14,180 --> 00:17:16,820 we're going to put "Bob" instead. 338 00:17:16,850 --> 00:17:18,996 {\an1}That way you're able to replace the words, 339 00:17:19,020 --> 00:17:20,456 but if somebody intercepts your message, 340 00:17:20,480 --> 00:17:22,926 {\an1}they may not actually knowthere's a secret message there, 341 00:17:22,950 --> 00:17:25,320 {\an1}because it reads like plain text. 342 00:17:25,350 --> 00:17:26,390 {\an1}A cipher, on the other hand, 343 00:17:26,420 --> 00:17:27,426 {\an1}is taking individual letters 344 00:17:27,450 --> 00:17:28,950 {\an1}or groups of letters, 345 00:17:28,980 --> 00:17:31,820 {\an1}and changing them through some process, 346 00:17:31,850 --> 00:17:33,956 {\an1}through some algorithm, into other letters, 347 00:17:33,980 --> 00:17:36,680 {\an1}into numbers, into symbols, into anything, 348 00:17:36,720 --> 00:17:38,426 so that you can mix up the message 349 00:17:38,450 --> 00:17:39,950 {\an1}and make it unreadable. 350 00:17:39,980 --> 00:17:41,750 ♪ 351 00:17:41,780 --> 00:17:45,720 NARRATOR: Using a method that had been around for hundreds of years, 352 00:17:45,750 --> 00:17:50,180 {\an1}they began decrypting messages using frequency analysis. 353 00:17:50,220 --> 00:17:52,820 HOUGHTON: This is what's called a frequency chart. 354 00:17:52,850 --> 00:17:54,456 {\an1}This is what allows a codebreaker 355 00:17:54,480 --> 00:17:57,420 {\an1}to very effectively look through an enciphered message 356 00:17:57,450 --> 00:18:00,480 {\an1}and say, "Okay, look, there's a lot of Ns", 357 00:18:00,520 --> 00:18:03,380 {\an1}"there's a lot of Gs, there are a lot of Qs," 358 00:18:03,420 --> 00:18:06,480 {\an1}so the likelihood is those are going to be 359 00:18:06,520 --> 00:18:08,480 {\an1}some of these very common letters 360 00:18:08,520 --> 00:18:11,450 {\an1}in the English language... Es, Ts, Ns, As. 361 00:18:11,480 --> 00:18:15,580 {\an1}If we understand this in a very mathematical way, 362 00:18:15,620 --> 00:18:18,350 it can help us to attack secret messages 363 00:18:18,380 --> 00:18:19,450 {\an1}and break them down 364 00:18:19,480 --> 00:18:23,280 and understand what they actually mean. 365 00:18:23,320 --> 00:18:26,426 NARRATOR: Elizebeth quickly discovered that she was quite good at 366 00:18:26,450 --> 00:18:30,320 {\an1}spotting patterns hidden in the texts. 367 00:18:30,350 --> 00:18:31,720 {\an1}Before long, though, 368 00:18:31,750 --> 00:18:33,626 {\an1}William and Elizebeth reached the limits 369 00:18:33,650 --> 00:18:36,350 {\an1}of what was known about codes and ciphers, 370 00:18:36,380 --> 00:18:40,320 {\an1}and they began inventing their own methods. 371 00:18:40,350 --> 00:18:42,926 {\an7}They figured out methods of solving secret messages 372 00:18:42,950 --> 00:18:44,980 {\an7}that had never been imagined before. 373 00:18:45,020 --> 00:18:47,820 {\an1}The first eight months of World War I... 374 00:18:47,850 --> 00:18:50,520 {\an1}this sounds incredible but it's completely true... 375 00:18:50,550 --> 00:18:54,920 {\an1}Elizebeth, William, and their colleagues at Riverbank 376 00:18:54,950 --> 00:18:58,050 {\an1}broke all messages forevery part of the U.S. military 377 00:18:58,080 --> 00:18:59,720 {\an1}and the Department of Justice. 378 00:19:02,250 --> 00:19:04,796 NARRATOR: They documented their breakthroughs in eight volumes 379 00:19:04,820 --> 00:19:06,950 known as the Riverbank Publications, 380 00:19:06,980 --> 00:19:09,156 {\an1}which established a mathematical foundation 381 00:19:09,180 --> 00:19:13,180 {\an1}to the principles of cryptology. 382 00:19:13,220 --> 00:19:15,650 HATCH: Prior to the publications at Riverbank 383 00:19:15,680 --> 00:19:17,650 {\an1}from Elizebeth and William, 384 00:19:17,680 --> 00:19:22,650 {\an1}cryptology had been thought of as a field for linguists, 385 00:19:22,680 --> 00:19:27,720 {\an1}for people with knowledge about foreign cultural areas 386 00:19:27,750 --> 00:19:32,350 and perhaps math might be a tool. 387 00:19:32,380 --> 00:19:36,420 But the Riverbank Laboratories' publications 388 00:19:36,450 --> 00:19:41,320 {\an1}turned cryptology from language to statistics. 389 00:19:44,680 --> 00:19:48,096 NARRATOR: In an age when codebreaking was becoming a weapon of war, 390 00:19:48,120 --> 00:19:49,796 {\an1}Elizebeth and William were forging 391 00:19:49,820 --> 00:19:52,680 {\an1}a new science of immense power. 392 00:19:52,720 --> 00:19:56,020 {\an1}It was a heady time for Elizebeth. 393 00:19:56,050 --> 00:19:58,850 {\an1}She was training the first generation of codebreakers 394 00:19:58,880 --> 00:20:01,480 {\an1}for the U.S. military. 395 00:20:01,520 --> 00:20:04,320 {\an1}The couple were so captivated by cryptology, 396 00:20:04,350 --> 00:20:07,850 {\an1}for fun, they embedded codes everywhere, 397 00:20:07,880 --> 00:20:11,580 {\an1}even the officer trainee class photo. 398 00:20:11,620 --> 00:20:12,980 {\an1}As the group gathered, 399 00:20:13,020 --> 00:20:16,980 they instructedeveryone assembled how to pose. 400 00:20:17,020 --> 00:20:18,526 {\an1}And if you're just looking at the picture, 401 00:20:18,550 --> 00:20:21,280 {\an1}you're like, man, whoever decided to shoot this 402 00:20:21,320 --> 00:20:22,480 {\an1}wasn't very disciplined. 403 00:20:22,520 --> 00:20:25,620 A good chunk of the people in the photograph 404 00:20:25,650 --> 00:20:28,080 {\an1}are looking forward, 405 00:20:28,120 --> 00:20:30,420 but a good chunk are looking to the side. 406 00:20:30,450 --> 00:20:32,280 {\an1}It turns out that 407 00:20:32,320 --> 00:20:34,680 {\an1}each person in the photo stands for 408 00:20:34,720 --> 00:20:37,780 a letter in Bacon's biliteral cipher. 409 00:20:37,820 --> 00:20:40,520 {\an1}So the people who are looking off to the side 410 00:20:40,550 --> 00:20:42,150 {\an1}are the B form of the cipher, 411 00:20:42,180 --> 00:20:44,726 {\an1}and the people who are looking straight ahead are the A form. 412 00:20:44,750 --> 00:20:46,180 {\an1}And when you put it all together, 413 00:20:46,220 --> 00:20:49,980 {\an1}the people in Bacon's cipher spell out the phrase 414 00:20:50,020 --> 00:20:51,650 {\an1}"knowledge is power," 415 00:20:51,680 --> 00:20:53,880 {\an1}which is one of Bacon's mottos 416 00:20:53,920 --> 00:20:58,880 {\an1}and a motto that William andElizebeth adopted as their own. 417 00:20:58,920 --> 00:21:01,973 {\an1}And it's not written in letters but it's written in people. 418 00:21:06,750 --> 00:21:08,256 NARRATOR: The Friedmans' work at Riverbank 419 00:21:08,280 --> 00:21:11,320 {\an1}was an eye-opener for the U.S. military. 420 00:21:11,350 --> 00:21:13,780 {\an1}Six months into the war, 421 00:21:13,820 --> 00:21:18,550 {\an1}the Army established its own cipher bureau in Washington. 422 00:21:18,580 --> 00:21:21,520 {\an1}With the workload at Riverbank dwindling, 423 00:21:21,550 --> 00:21:23,520 {\an1}William signed up for military duty 424 00:21:23,550 --> 00:21:26,080 {\an1}as a field codebreaker in Europe. 425 00:21:26,120 --> 00:21:28,980 {\an1}Elizebeth wanted to do field work as well, 426 00:21:29,020 --> 00:21:31,020 {\an1}but she could not; 427 00:21:31,050 --> 00:21:34,720 {\an1}Women were excluded from serving at the front. 428 00:21:34,750 --> 00:21:35,926 HOUGHTON: Being left behind had to be 429 00:21:35,950 --> 00:21:37,320 {\an1}incredibly difficult for Elizebeth. 430 00:21:37,350 --> 00:21:40,450 Not only is the man that she loves 431 00:21:40,480 --> 00:21:42,350 {\an1}being sent off to fight a war, 432 00:21:42,380 --> 00:21:44,280 {\an1}but this was her field. 433 00:21:44,320 --> 00:21:45,580 {\an1}She taught William 434 00:21:45,620 --> 00:21:47,620 {\an1}how to break codes and ciphers. 435 00:21:47,650 --> 00:21:52,020 {\an1}This was a key way to move forward in your career. 436 00:21:52,050 --> 00:21:55,350 {\an1}William could do it, she couldn't. 437 00:21:55,380 --> 00:22:00,050 ♪ 438 00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:01,320 NARRATOR: And worse still, 439 00:22:01,350 --> 00:22:05,720 {\an1}she would be on her own at Riverbank. 440 00:22:05,750 --> 00:22:10,280 FAGONE: It was a terrifying time for her. 441 00:22:10,320 --> 00:22:13,480 {\an1}She let it be known in letters to William 442 00:22:13,520 --> 00:22:17,020 {\an1}that George Fabyan was not treating her well, 443 00:22:17,050 --> 00:22:19,180 {\an1}that he was pressuring her. 444 00:22:19,220 --> 00:22:21,680 {\an1}There's a reference in one of William's letters 445 00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:24,120 to the fact that Fabyan might have 446 00:22:24,150 --> 00:22:27,820 {\an1}sexually harassed Elizebeth, might have propositioned her. 447 00:22:27,850 --> 00:22:31,350 {\an1}William was very angry, he called Fabyan 448 00:22:31,380 --> 00:22:33,126 {\an1}"that nameless rascal" in that letter 449 00:22:33,150 --> 00:22:35,850 {\an1}and said he wanted to hurt him, to beat him up. 450 00:22:35,880 --> 00:22:38,020 And so when they were reunited, 451 00:22:38,050 --> 00:22:41,950 {\an1}they were highly motivated to get the hell out of there. 452 00:22:41,980 --> 00:22:45,150 NARRATOR: At war's end, William used his military contacts 453 00:22:45,180 --> 00:22:47,720 to line up a job in Washington. 454 00:22:47,750 --> 00:22:50,050 {\an1}He arrived in Washington 455 00:22:50,080 --> 00:22:53,320 {\an1}with a reputation earned on the battlefield. 456 00:22:53,350 --> 00:22:56,880 {\an1}Elizebeth arrived in Washington as William's wife. 457 00:22:56,920 --> 00:23:00,850 {\an1}Technological innovations were fueling a global race 458 00:23:00,880 --> 00:23:03,320 {\an1}to create ever-more advanced devices 459 00:23:03,350 --> 00:23:05,950 {\an1}for making and breaking codes. 460 00:23:05,980 --> 00:23:09,950 {\an1}The post-war world was still a dangerous place. 461 00:23:09,980 --> 00:23:14,750 {\an1}In 1921, William went to work for the Army Signal Corps 462 00:23:14,780 --> 00:23:17,580 {\an1}developing new cipher machines. 463 00:23:17,620 --> 00:23:21,480 Elizebeth was also offered a job... 464 00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:24,350 But at half of William's salary. 465 00:23:24,380 --> 00:23:28,550 {\an1}She took the position, but left after a year. 466 00:23:28,580 --> 00:23:32,280 She believed her codebreaking days were over. 467 00:23:35,750 --> 00:23:39,250 ♪ 468 00:23:39,280 --> 00:23:43,520 {\an1}In 1923, Elizebeth gave birth to a daughter, 469 00:23:43,550 --> 00:23:47,580 {\an8}soon followed by the birth of a son. 470 00:23:49,380 --> 00:23:53,780 {\an1}Codebreaking unexpectedly entered Elizebeth's life again 471 00:23:53,820 --> 00:23:56,820 in 1925 when a Coast Guard officer 472 00:23:56,850 --> 00:23:59,180 {\an1}knocked on the door of her suburban home 473 00:23:59,220 --> 00:24:01,720 {\an1}with an urgent request. 474 00:24:01,750 --> 00:24:04,656 {\an1}He explained that the CoastGuard's network of radio towers 475 00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:07,580 had interceptedhundreds of encrypted messages, 476 00:24:07,620 --> 00:24:11,220 but no one knew how to break them. 477 00:24:11,250 --> 00:24:13,226 {\an1}Decrypting the messages might help them 478 00:24:13,250 --> 00:24:16,920 {\an1}gain the upper hand against a deadly adversary. 479 00:24:20,980 --> 00:24:22,320 {\an1}The Prohibition Act, 480 00:24:22,350 --> 00:24:24,196 signed into law several years earlier, 481 00:24:24,220 --> 00:24:28,680 {\an1}had triggered an explosion ofillegal trafficking in alcohol. 482 00:24:28,720 --> 00:24:31,580 {\an1}Mobsters and gangsters 483 00:24:31,620 --> 00:24:33,680 {\an1}ruled the streets. 484 00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:39,450 OSTEIKA: Murder was rampant, 485 00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:43,920 and it became not just murder of gangster on gangster, 486 00:24:43,950 --> 00:24:45,650 {\an7}but they were starting to murder 487 00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:49,120 {\an1}anybody who opposed them. 488 00:24:49,150 --> 00:24:50,820 {\an1}The federal police didn't even 489 00:24:50,850 --> 00:24:55,580 {\an1}really understandthe concept of organized crime. 490 00:24:55,620 --> 00:25:00,920 FAGONE: A massive black market rises up, 491 00:25:00,950 --> 00:25:03,420 {\an1}and it's controlled by gangsters, 492 00:25:03,450 --> 00:25:06,880 {\an1}racketeers, and mafiosi. 493 00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:08,850 {\an1}And very quickly, 494 00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:11,350 {\an1}they make a mockery out of the Coast Guard. 495 00:25:11,380 --> 00:25:14,680 NARRATOR: The Coast Guard was charged with 496 00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:19,680 {\an1}stopping the deluge of liquor coming in by sea, 497 00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:24,480 {\an1}but it only had 200 boats topatrol 5,000 miles of coastline. 498 00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:26,420 The rum runners, on the other hand, 499 00:25:26,450 --> 00:25:29,320 {\an1}had unlimited resources. 500 00:25:29,350 --> 00:25:31,950 {\an1}Huge ocean-going vessels served as mother ships 501 00:25:31,980 --> 00:25:34,256 {\an1}that stored millions of dollars' worth of liquor 502 00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:36,150 in their holds. 503 00:25:36,180 --> 00:25:40,250 {\an1}A fleet of smaller crafts, called black ships, 504 00:25:40,280 --> 00:25:43,920 {\an1}would divvy up the cargo and transport it back to shore, 505 00:25:43,950 --> 00:25:48,050 {\an1}logistics made possible by the use of shortwave radios 506 00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:50,880 {\an1}and sophisticated codes. 507 00:25:50,920 --> 00:25:54,880 {\an1}The Coast Guard officer pleaded with Elizebeth for help. 508 00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:57,720 {\an1}She was no teetotaler, but Elizebeth saw the damage 509 00:25:57,750 --> 00:26:01,520 organized crime was doing to the country. 510 00:26:03,180 --> 00:26:05,450 {\an1}During her first three months on the job, 511 00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:07,250 {\an1}she single-handedly decrypted 512 00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:11,720 two years' worth of backlogged messages. 513 00:26:11,750 --> 00:26:16,250 GREENFIELD: It's basically Elizebeth and a secretary filing her decrypts, 514 00:26:16,280 --> 00:26:20,280 and she's doing all of that work during those years. 515 00:26:20,320 --> 00:26:21,450 {\an1}She says she ends up looking 516 00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,650 {\an7}at about 25,000 intercepts a year. 517 00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:26,380 {\an7}That's just astonishing. 518 00:26:26,420 --> 00:26:29,720 {\an1}It's really a war. 519 00:26:29,750 --> 00:26:33,780 NARRATOR: Elizebeth, however, was not just decrypting the messages, 520 00:26:33,820 --> 00:26:37,650 she was weaponizing the data she was gathering. 521 00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:40,680 OSTEIKA: What Elizebeth does is she begins 522 00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:43,550 the development of strategic intelligence, 523 00:26:43,580 --> 00:26:45,950 {\an1}which nobody has done to this point. 524 00:26:45,980 --> 00:26:50,620 {\an1}And what that means is she takes the information 525 00:26:50,650 --> 00:26:54,880 {\an1}that she's obtaining in these broken codes and ciphers, 526 00:26:54,920 --> 00:27:00,050 {\an1}which are basically the plansand intentions of the gangsters. 527 00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:05,550 {\an1}And she begins to figure out who owns the ships, 528 00:27:05,580 --> 00:27:09,850 {\an1}where a ship is scheduled to leave from, 529 00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:15,480 {\an1}where those ships are going, who's meeting those ships. 530 00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:20,680 {\an1}All of these arrangements were made with wireless radio. 531 00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:23,326 {\an1}She was able to explainbasically to the U.S. government 532 00:27:23,350 --> 00:27:26,450 {\an1}and all of its federal law enforcement agencies 533 00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:28,750 {\an1}what organized crime looked like, 534 00:27:28,780 --> 00:27:33,850 {\an1}how they were doing their job, and how to stop them. 535 00:27:35,380 --> 00:27:37,580 {\an1}And that is really visionary. 536 00:27:38,920 --> 00:27:42,920 NARRATOR: By 1931, Elizebeth's work was so indispensable 537 00:27:42,950 --> 00:27:45,150 {\an1}the Coast Guard approved her plan to build 538 00:27:45,180 --> 00:27:46,550 {\an1}an official codebreaking unit... 539 00:27:46,580 --> 00:27:50,720 {\an1}one of only a handful of such units in the country 540 00:27:50,750 --> 00:27:54,120 {\an1}and the first to be run by a woman. 541 00:27:54,150 --> 00:27:58,750 FAGONE: She was allowed to hire junior codebreakers and train them. 542 00:27:58,780 --> 00:28:02,820 She was given a raise to $3,800 a year, 543 00:28:02,850 --> 00:28:06,250 {\an1}which is not a lot of money, but a bump for her. 544 00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:07,726 {\an1}And she got a new title along with it. 545 00:28:07,750 --> 00:28:10,520 {\an1}She was called the "cryptanalyst in charge"... 546 00:28:10,550 --> 00:28:15,350 {\an1}essentially the chiefcodebreaker for the Coast Guard. 547 00:28:15,380 --> 00:28:18,180 {\an1}♪ 548 00:28:18,220 --> 00:28:21,580 NARRATOR: For a mother with young children, a home to run, 549 00:28:21,620 --> 00:28:24,520 and a husband who worked equally long hours, 550 00:28:24,550 --> 00:28:27,280 {\an1}it was an exhausting time. 551 00:28:27,320 --> 00:28:32,720 {\an1}A decade into Prohibition, the crime syndicates had grown 552 00:28:32,750 --> 00:28:37,320 {\an1}into multinational businesses run with exacting efficiency. 553 00:28:37,350 --> 00:28:40,580 {\an1}But with Elizebeth's intelligence in tow, 554 00:28:40,620 --> 00:28:42,450 {\an1}the U.S. government could finally 555 00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:45,650 {\an1}take the mobsters to court. 556 00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:47,256 {\an1}Elizebeth became the key witness 557 00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:50,050 in a series of sensational trials, 558 00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:53,250 {\an1}starting with the prosecution of CONEXCO, 559 00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:57,750 {\an1}the largest rum-running enterprise in the world. 560 00:28:57,780 --> 00:29:01,720 {\an1}They had the network from the manufacturer 561 00:29:01,750 --> 00:29:07,280 {\an1}of the liquor to the final distribution of that liquor 562 00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:09,750 {\an1}to speakeasies and nightclubs. 563 00:29:09,780 --> 00:29:12,350 {\an1}When the government went after CONEXCO, 564 00:29:12,380 --> 00:29:16,880 {\an1}it would be like the government going after Walmart today. 565 00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:20,550 {\an8}NARRATOR: With a virtual monopoly on bootlegging in the Pacific 566 00:29:20,580 --> 00:29:23,520 {\an7}and the Gulf of Mexico, CONEXCO supplied liquor 567 00:29:23,550 --> 00:29:28,520 {\an7}to the most notorious mobster in the country, Al Capone. 568 00:29:28,550 --> 00:29:30,450 Within a year, 569 00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:34,480 {\an1}the U.S. government indicted CONEXCO's top rank, 570 00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:38,920 {\an1}which included Capone's brother. 571 00:29:38,950 --> 00:29:41,680 In 1933, at the trial in New Orleans, 572 00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:44,080 {\an1}prosecutors called upon Elizebeth to testify 573 00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:50,020 {\an1}against some of the most dangerous men in the country. 574 00:29:50,050 --> 00:29:51,526 There were a lot of prohibition agents 575 00:29:51,550 --> 00:29:53,696 {\an1}who had already been killed in the line of duty. 576 00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:56,656 {\an8}SHELDON: There are these plainclothes people that she doesn't know 577 00:29:56,680 --> 00:30:01,850 {\an8}that are there to keep her from being whacked by the bad guys. 578 00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:04,756 {\an7}But it wouldn't have occurred toher not to testify against them. 579 00:30:04,780 --> 00:30:06,150 {\an7}These people had to be put away, 580 00:30:06,180 --> 00:30:08,296 {\an7}that was the whole point of breaking the codes. 581 00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:10,750 (gavel pounds) 582 00:30:10,780 --> 00:30:13,220 NARRATOR: When Elizebeth took the stand, 583 00:30:13,250 --> 00:30:16,520 {\an1}she was grilled mercilessly by Al Capone's attorneys 584 00:30:16,550 --> 00:30:20,680 {\an1}who worked to undermine her credibility. 585 00:30:20,720 --> 00:30:23,120 FAGONE: Whenever Elizebeth tried to explain 586 00:30:23,150 --> 00:30:25,650 {\an1}how she solved the messages, 587 00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:29,250 {\an1}these six lawyers... men... would often stand up and object 588 00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:31,650 {\an1}and say that it was some kind of witchcraft, 589 00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:33,356 {\an1}that code breaking was not science, 590 00:30:33,380 --> 00:30:37,580 {\an1}that Elizebeth was just making a guess. 591 00:30:37,620 --> 00:30:39,126 {\an1}She got so fed up with the repeated objections 592 00:30:39,150 --> 00:30:41,680 {\an1}of the defense attorneys that she asked a judge 593 00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:43,496 {\an1}if she could have access to a blackboard. 594 00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:48,380 {\an1}And Elizebeth proceeded to give a class in codebreaking. 595 00:30:48,420 --> 00:30:51,520 And by the time she was finished, 596 00:30:51,550 --> 00:30:54,420 {\an1}the defense attorneys had nothing else to say. 597 00:30:54,450 --> 00:30:56,750 OSTEIKA: They must have been thinking 598 00:30:56,780 --> 00:30:59,750 {\an1}they were going to be able to bowl her over 599 00:30:59,780 --> 00:31:03,180 {\an1}and make her testimony irrelevant. 600 00:31:03,220 --> 00:31:05,950 {\an1}And instead she takes control of that 601 00:31:05,980 --> 00:31:08,220 {\an1}and, you know, seals the deal. 602 00:31:08,250 --> 00:31:09,450 {\an1}She gets the conviction. 603 00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:14,180 NARRATOR: Elizebeth became a national celebrity. 604 00:31:14,220 --> 00:31:17,780 {\an1}One newspaper praised her "class in cryptology." 605 00:31:17,820 --> 00:31:19,520 {\an1}Another described her as 606 00:31:19,550 --> 00:31:23,150 {\an1}"a pretty woman who protects the United States." 607 00:31:23,180 --> 00:31:26,680 {\an1}Reporters expressed surprise that one woman could take down 608 00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:30,250 {\an1}some of the most dangerous gangsters in the country. 609 00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:32,280 HOUGHTON: This is juicy stuff, 610 00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:33,856 {\an7}these are murderers and these are people 611 00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:36,680 {\an7}who will become household names in America. 612 00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:39,180 {\an8}And then along comes this woman 613 00:31:39,220 --> 00:31:43,050 {\an1}who is the key witness at the trial 614 00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:45,350 {\an1}to get these guys thrown in prison. 615 00:31:45,380 --> 00:31:47,650 {\an1}They don't talk about her skills, 616 00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:50,050 {\an1}they don't talk about her brains, 617 00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:51,756 {\an1}her ability to break these codes, 618 00:31:51,780 --> 00:31:54,280 {\an1}and to bring these gangsters to justice. 619 00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:57,520 {\an1}They talk about how she looks, how she's dressed, 620 00:31:57,550 --> 00:32:00,250 {\an1}that she's this dainty, little woman who is bringing 621 00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:03,350 {\an1}these big Al Capone-type mobsters to justice. 622 00:32:03,380 --> 00:32:07,550 NARRATOR: William was delighted that his wife was finally getting 623 00:32:07,580 --> 00:32:10,220 {\an1}the recognition she deserved. 624 00:32:10,250 --> 00:32:12,950 {\an1}"I'm as proud as I can be," he told her. 625 00:32:16,020 --> 00:32:19,020 {\an1}As Elizebeth's work was seeing the light of day, 626 00:32:19,050 --> 00:32:22,950 {\an1}William's was burrowing deeper into the shadows. 627 00:32:22,980 --> 00:32:26,820 {\an1}By the late fall of 1939, 628 00:32:26,850 --> 00:32:31,050 {\an1}Elizebeth knew something wasterribly wrong with her husband. 629 00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:33,420 FAGONE: He developed mood swings... 630 00:32:33,450 --> 00:32:34,556 {\an1}that's what Elizebeth called them, 631 00:32:34,580 --> 00:32:37,150 {\an1}mood swings or down swings. 632 00:32:37,180 --> 00:32:40,750 {\an1}Elizebeth was trying to figure out what was going on. 633 00:32:40,780 --> 00:32:42,180 {\an1}She assumed that he was working 634 00:32:42,220 --> 00:32:46,320 {\an1}on a very difficult project at work. 635 00:32:46,350 --> 00:32:47,720 {\an7}She didn't know what it was. 636 00:32:47,750 --> 00:32:50,620 {\an7}He didn't tell her and he couldn't tell her. 637 00:32:50,650 --> 00:32:54,350 NARRATOR: William's work for Army intelligence 638 00:32:54,380 --> 00:32:57,980 {\an1}was classified top secret. 639 00:32:58,020 --> 00:32:59,796 {\an1}He was breaking into the encryption machines 640 00:32:59,820 --> 00:33:01,720 {\an1}of America's enemies. 641 00:33:01,750 --> 00:33:06,780 {\an1}The machines had reached a new level of complexity. 642 00:33:06,820 --> 00:33:08,920 {\an1}Many were considered unbreakable. 643 00:33:10,050 --> 00:33:12,120 {\an1}(plane engines droning) 644 00:33:12,150 --> 00:33:14,950 {\an1}(bombs whistling) 645 00:33:14,980 --> 00:33:17,020 (explosion) 646 00:33:17,050 --> 00:33:19,880 {\an1}With the start of the Second World War in Europe, 647 00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:24,550 {\an1}William's work reached a new level of urgency. 648 00:33:26,820 --> 00:33:29,520 GREENFIELD: There's Blitzkrieg. 649 00:33:29,550 --> 00:33:31,720 {\an1}You see Paris fall. 650 00:33:31,750 --> 00:33:35,650 {\an1}You see that Britain is left standing almost alone. 651 00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:38,520 {\an1}You see that the Japanese 652 00:33:38,550 --> 00:33:40,880 {\an1}are starting to make overtures 653 00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:45,450 {\an1}to be joined in alliance with Germany and with Italy. 654 00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:47,550 {\an1}It's looking very bad 655 00:33:47,580 --> 00:33:50,780 and William, in addition, as a Jewish man, 656 00:33:50,820 --> 00:33:53,580 {\an1}is aware that terrible things are happening 657 00:33:53,620 --> 00:33:55,950 {\an1}to Jewish people in Germany. 658 00:33:55,980 --> 00:34:00,380 {\an1}So I think the weight was colossal. 659 00:34:02,050 --> 00:34:06,680 NARRATOR: William was trying to pry open aJapanese machine called Purple, 660 00:34:06,720 --> 00:34:11,350 a device he had never seen or even had diagrams for. 661 00:34:11,380 --> 00:34:15,020 FAGONE: William and his team at the Army worked around the clock 662 00:34:15,050 --> 00:34:18,750 {\an1}to try to reverse engineer these Japanese cipher machines 663 00:34:18,780 --> 00:34:20,880 {\an1}because if they could, 664 00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:23,326 {\an1}then they would essentially be able to read minds 665 00:34:23,350 --> 00:34:26,580 {\an1}of the Axis powers, Japan and Nazi Germany. 666 00:34:26,620 --> 00:34:30,580 HOUGHTON: William had to keep all that inside. 667 00:34:30,620 --> 00:34:32,326 {\an1}He had a small group of people he worked with 668 00:34:32,350 --> 00:34:35,650 {\an1}that he could talk to, but they all worked for him. 669 00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:39,220 {\an1}And because he internalized all this stuff, 670 00:34:39,250 --> 00:34:42,350 {\an1}it just burned him up inside until he finally broke. 671 00:34:42,380 --> 00:34:47,680 NARRATOR: William's team finally cracked Purple in September of 1940. 672 00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:55,320 {\an1}Three months later, he had a complete breakdown 673 00:34:55,350 --> 00:34:57,096 {\an1}and checked himself into the psychiatric unit 674 00:34:57,120 --> 00:35:00,920 {\an1}of Walter Reed General Hospital. 675 00:35:00,950 --> 00:35:04,120 {\an1}Elizebeth watched in dismay 676 00:35:04,150 --> 00:35:09,050 {\an1}as he sank deeper and deeper into a depression. 677 00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:12,050 FAGONE: William at that point was still 678 00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:14,180 {\an1}the main breadwinner in the household. 679 00:35:14,220 --> 00:35:17,120 {\an1}He made much more money than Elizebeth did. 680 00:35:17,150 --> 00:35:19,980 {\an1}And so the fact of him being in the psych ward, 681 00:35:20,020 --> 00:35:23,050 {\an1}the uncertainty about his future 682 00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:25,180 {\an1}created a much bigger uncertainty 683 00:35:25,220 --> 00:35:28,080 {\an1}about both of their lives. 684 00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:32,420 NARRATOR: Every day for the nearly three months he was hospitalized, 685 00:35:32,450 --> 00:35:36,820 {\an1}Elizebeth made the exhausting trip to see her husband. 686 00:35:36,850 --> 00:35:41,680 GREENFIELD: She is absolutely essential to William's recovery. 687 00:35:41,720 --> 00:35:47,320 {\an1}The medical establishment justlet them sort it out themselves. 688 00:35:47,350 --> 00:35:54,780 {\an1}And William says later that she was the person 689 00:35:54,820 --> 00:35:59,580 {\an1}who sent down the rope to theterrible morass that he was in. 690 00:35:59,620 --> 00:36:02,250 {\an1}She pulled him out of the swamp. 691 00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:06,020 {\an1}She did it by willpower, she did it by faith in him. 692 00:36:08,650 --> 00:36:10,480 NARRATOR: After he was discharged, 693 00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:13,380 {\an1}he returned to his job at the Army. 694 00:36:13,420 --> 00:36:15,426 {\an1}But he would struggle with clinical depression 695 00:36:15,450 --> 00:36:17,820 {\an1}for the rest of his life. 696 00:36:17,850 --> 00:36:22,850 FAGONE: Elizebeth and William had always been equals, a team. 697 00:36:22,880 --> 00:36:26,550 {\an1}After William's breakdown in 1941, 698 00:36:26,580 --> 00:36:29,420 {\an1}he would never quite be the same. 699 00:36:29,450 --> 00:36:32,420 {\an1}And so Elizebeth would have to step up. 700 00:36:32,450 --> 00:36:34,680 {\an1}From now on she would, in many ways, 701 00:36:34,720 --> 00:36:37,250 {\an1}have to be the stronger of the two. 702 00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:50,980 (planes droning, explosions echo) 703 00:36:51,020 --> 00:36:53,650 ♪ 704 00:36:53,680 --> 00:36:55,980 NARRATOR: In December 1941, 705 00:36:56,020 --> 00:36:59,980 after a surprise Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, 706 00:37:00,020 --> 00:37:02,080 {\an1}the U.S. military immediately ramped up 707 00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:05,320 {\an1}its codebreaking capabilities. 708 00:37:05,350 --> 00:37:08,350 {\an1}Elizebeth's team had just shifted from the Coast Guard 709 00:37:08,380 --> 00:37:09,680 to the Navy. 710 00:37:09,720 --> 00:37:11,620 {\an1}Now a military operation, 711 00:37:11,650 --> 00:37:13,720 the Navy placed a uniformed officer 712 00:37:13,750 --> 00:37:18,020 {\an1}with much less experience in charge of the unit. 713 00:37:18,050 --> 00:37:20,956 SHELDON: The Navy had a rule that women couldn't be in charge of men, 714 00:37:20,980 --> 00:37:23,156 {\an1}and so she had to take a secondary position 715 00:37:23,180 --> 00:37:27,120 {\an1}to a man who wasn't as good as she was. 716 00:37:27,150 --> 00:37:31,020 FAGONE: She had to deal with the pain and the frustration 717 00:37:31,050 --> 00:37:34,650 {\an1}of losing leadership ofsomething that she had created, 718 00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:37,550 {\an1}that she had built and that was really her baby. 719 00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:43,150 NARRATOR: The unit's assignment was to monitor communications 720 00:37:43,180 --> 00:37:45,980 {\an1}between a Nazi spy ring in South America 721 00:37:46,020 --> 00:37:48,880 {\an1}and the German high command. 722 00:37:51,220 --> 00:37:52,426 GREENFIELD: There had been a high amount 723 00:37:52,450 --> 00:37:55,650 {\an1}of German emigration to South America 724 00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:57,320 {\an1}in the early 20th century. 725 00:37:57,350 --> 00:38:01,420 {\an1}There were places that had German towns 726 00:38:01,450 --> 00:38:03,156 {\an1}with German street names, German newspapers, 727 00:38:03,180 --> 00:38:04,480 {\an1}German schools... 728 00:38:04,520 --> 00:38:07,050 {\an1}(German music playing) 729 00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:09,226 {\an1}In addition, you had homegrown fascist movements. 730 00:38:09,250 --> 00:38:11,350 {\an1}You had movements in Brazil, 731 00:38:11,380 --> 00:38:15,320 {\an1}in Paraguay, and other countries 732 00:38:15,350 --> 00:38:18,620 {\an1}where you see real similarities with what is going on 733 00:38:18,650 --> 00:38:21,520 {\an1}with Hitler's Germany and what's happening 734 00:38:21,550 --> 00:38:24,050 {\an1}in Mussolini's Italy. 735 00:38:25,450 --> 00:38:27,496 NARRATOR: Decoding messages written in German 736 00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:30,080 wasn't a problem for Elizebeth. 737 00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:31,896 {\an1}She was now so skilled at recognizing 738 00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:35,020 {\an1}the various statisticalproperties of foreign languages, 739 00:38:35,050 --> 00:38:37,520 {\an1}a translator could do the rest. 740 00:38:37,550 --> 00:38:39,450 {\an1}In her rum-runner days, 741 00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:43,820 {\an1}she had even decrypted messages in Chinese. 742 00:38:43,850 --> 00:38:48,850 {\an1}Among the decrypted messages, one name appeared over and over: 743 00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:50,650 {\an1}Sargo. 744 00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:52,350 {\an1}She doesn't know it yet, 745 00:38:52,380 --> 00:38:55,820 {\an1}but she's starting to suspect she's onto something big, 746 00:38:55,850 --> 00:38:57,320 and she is. 747 00:38:57,350 --> 00:38:58,950 {\an1}Sargo is the code name 748 00:38:58,980 --> 00:39:02,220 for a man named Johannes Siegfried Becker. 749 00:39:02,250 --> 00:39:06,780 And Becker is the SS's main man in South America. 750 00:39:06,820 --> 00:39:10,180 {\an1}He is part of Hitler's elite. 751 00:39:10,220 --> 00:39:14,220 NARRATOR: As Elizebeth began to decode Sargo's messages, 752 00:39:14,250 --> 00:39:17,180 {\an1}she made a startling revelation... 753 00:39:17,220 --> 00:39:20,650 {\an1}his network was transmitting the locations of Allied ships 754 00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:23,950 {\an1}to U-boats in the Atlantic. 755 00:39:23,980 --> 00:39:25,026 HOUGHTON: One of the most important 756 00:39:25,050 --> 00:39:27,380 {\an1}intelligence targets for the Germans 757 00:39:27,420 --> 00:39:30,250 {\an1}is information about Allied shipping, 758 00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:32,326 {\an1}because it would be so easy for the Germans 759 00:39:32,350 --> 00:39:35,020 {\an1}to pick off these supply ships one-by-one 760 00:39:35,050 --> 00:39:38,450 {\an1}or to take out entire convoys all at once 761 00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:40,496 {\an1}if they had accurate information about what route they were 762 00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:43,680 {\an1}taking that they could knock the English out of the war. 763 00:39:43,720 --> 00:39:46,396 {\an1}And without the English, the war's essentially over. 764 00:39:46,420 --> 00:39:49,750 (rapid beeping) 765 00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:54,320 NARRATOR: In March of 1942, 766 00:39:54,350 --> 00:39:57,620 Elizebeth decrypted a series of ominous dispatches 767 00:39:57,650 --> 00:40:02,780 {\an1}about the largest of the Allied supply ships, the Queen Mary. 768 00:40:04,720 --> 00:40:07,380 {\an1}With her record-breaking speed and size, 769 00:40:07,420 --> 00:40:10,580 {\an1}the Queen Mary's military value was so great, 770 00:40:10,620 --> 00:40:13,720 {\an1}Adolph Hitler was offering $250,000 771 00:40:13,750 --> 00:40:16,180 {\an1}to the U-boat captain who could bring her down. 772 00:40:16,220 --> 00:40:21,580 {\an1}On this trip, more than 8,000 men stood to lose their lives 773 00:40:21,620 --> 00:40:23,780 {\an1}if the ship was sunk. 774 00:40:23,820 --> 00:40:26,550 {\an1}Guided by the secret messages, 775 00:40:26,580 --> 00:40:30,850 {\an1}the U-boats found the Queen Mary off the coast of Brazil. 776 00:40:30,880 --> 00:40:34,150 {\an1}But before they could strike, 777 00:40:34,180 --> 00:40:39,180 {\an1}Elizebeth's decrypts were relayed to the ship's captain. 778 00:40:39,220 --> 00:40:41,096 {\an1}He was able to take evasive maneuvers 779 00:40:41,120 --> 00:40:44,220 {\an1}and bring the ship safely to port. 780 00:40:44,250 --> 00:40:46,750 {\an1}(ship horn blares) 781 00:40:50,650 --> 00:40:53,080 ♪ 782 00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:56,550 {\an1}As soon as Elizebeth started unlocking Sargo's messages, 783 00:40:56,580 --> 00:41:00,680 {\an1}the balance in the Atlantic began to tip. 784 00:41:00,720 --> 00:41:02,596 DAVID HATCH: The information could be given 785 00:41:02,620 --> 00:41:06,980 {\an7}to American forces first for a ship to take evasive action, 786 00:41:07,020 --> 00:41:10,020 {\an8}and also for the hunter-killer teams 787 00:41:10,050 --> 00:41:11,896 {\an7}that the Americans had in the South Atlantic. 788 00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:17,920 {\an7}And many U-boats were sunk based on this kind of information. 789 00:41:17,950 --> 00:41:22,820 {\an1}(splash, explosion) 790 00:41:22,850 --> 00:41:24,326 HOUGHTON: The work that Elizebeth Friedman is doing 791 00:41:24,350 --> 00:41:27,096 {\an1}is some of the most important work of the Second World War. 792 00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:31,320 {\an1}It is allowing the supply line to exist. 793 00:41:31,350 --> 00:41:34,250 NARRATOR: Then, without warning, 794 00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:37,780 {\an1}the Brazilian police started rounding up the Nazi spies, 795 00:41:37,820 --> 00:41:41,550 {\an1}driving Sargo further underground. 796 00:41:41,580 --> 00:41:45,520 Within days, the airwaves went silent. 797 00:41:45,550 --> 00:41:49,126 HOUGHTON: One of the worst things that youcan do, if you're chasing spies, 798 00:41:49,150 --> 00:41:53,320 is to arrest them before you're done following them 799 00:41:53,350 --> 00:41:55,226 {\an1}and watching them and seeing what they're doing. 800 00:41:55,250 --> 00:41:58,150 {\an1}Because the easiest way for a country to know 801 00:41:58,180 --> 00:42:00,426 {\an1}that you've broken their communication system, 802 00:42:00,450 --> 00:42:02,480 {\an1}or that they have a leak somewhere, 803 00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:04,980 {\an1}is if you round up all their spies. 804 00:42:05,020 --> 00:42:08,080 NARRATOR: Elizebeth was stunned to learn that her work 805 00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:10,820 {\an1}had been tripped up by one of her own. 806 00:42:10,850 --> 00:42:13,020 {\an1}The Brazilians were conducting the arrests 807 00:42:13,050 --> 00:42:16,320 {\an1}at the behest of the American FBI director... 808 00:42:16,350 --> 00:42:18,620 J. Edgar Hoover. 809 00:42:18,650 --> 00:42:21,980 HOUGHTON: Hoover wants the glory, Hoover wants the headlines. 810 00:42:22,020 --> 00:42:23,920 {\an1}That was really stupid of him to do. 811 00:42:23,950 --> 00:42:27,250 {\an1}This is really life and death. 812 00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:30,250 {\an1}Hoover is now completely cutting us off from 813 00:42:30,280 --> 00:42:32,780 {\an1}this life-saving intelligence that's allowing us 814 00:42:32,820 --> 00:42:34,926 {\an1}to keep our convoys safe in the Atlantic Ocean. 815 00:42:34,950 --> 00:42:40,480 {\an1}This puts Elizebethand her team back at square one. 816 00:42:40,520 --> 00:42:46,050 NARRATOR: Sargo escaped and immediately rebuilt the network. 817 00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:49,220 The spies set up 15 new circuits, 818 00:42:49,250 --> 00:42:54,450 {\an1}each adopting a far more complex system of codes. 819 00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:59,920 {\an7}Month after month, the unsolved messages piled up. 820 00:42:59,950 --> 00:43:02,456 {\an7}Elizebeth suspected that the codes were being generated 821 00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:06,180 {\an7}by a highly complex machine called the Enigma, 822 00:43:06,220 --> 00:43:10,220 {\an8}used by the German Intelligence Services. 823 00:43:10,250 --> 00:43:13,020 {\an7}There were several models of the Enigma. 824 00:43:13,050 --> 00:43:17,220 {\an1}The British were using a newly invented decoding device 825 00:43:17,250 --> 00:43:21,220 {\an1}to crack into the version used by the German military. 826 00:43:21,250 --> 00:43:25,520 {\an1}The machine Elizebeth was facing was slightly less intricate, 827 00:43:25,550 --> 00:43:27,850 but not by much. 828 00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:31,680 Her tools were still only pencil and paper. 829 00:43:31,720 --> 00:43:36,380 Day after day, she waded through the messages. 830 00:43:36,420 --> 00:43:40,250 After two months, she spotted a chink in the Enigma's armor. 831 00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:43,320 {\an1}She intercepted a cache of 28 messages 832 00:43:43,350 --> 00:43:45,950 {\an1}all sent in the same key, 833 00:43:45,980 --> 00:43:49,120 {\an1}a careless mistake made by the spies. 834 00:43:49,150 --> 00:43:51,850 {\an1}The breakthrough enabled her to make inroads 835 00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:54,350 {\an1}into the machine's system. 836 00:43:54,380 --> 00:43:57,420 {\an1}She lined up the messages one below the other 837 00:43:57,450 --> 00:44:00,720 {\an1}in a technique called solving "in depth." 838 00:44:00,750 --> 00:44:02,080 HOUGHTON: When you solve in depth 839 00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:03,580 {\an1}and you put papers next to each other 840 00:44:03,620 --> 00:44:05,496 {\an1}or one on top of the other and you're looking at 841 00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:07,756 {\an1}what is the first letter in each of these messages, 842 00:44:07,780 --> 00:44:10,026 {\an1}what is the second letter in each of these messages, 843 00:44:10,050 --> 00:44:11,290 {\an1}once you have the knowledge that 844 00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:13,096 {\an1}you're dealing with the same key every day, 845 00:44:13,120 --> 00:44:15,750 {\an7}then you can actually start breaking down words 846 00:44:15,780 --> 00:44:18,456 {\an7}and understanding what letters are turning into others. 847 00:44:18,480 --> 00:44:20,150 (typing) 848 00:44:20,180 --> 00:44:24,980 GREENFIELD: I think that Elizebeth would be the first to say 849 00:44:25,020 --> 00:44:27,720 {\an1}that you are always looking for the mistake 850 00:44:27,750 --> 00:44:30,650 {\an1}that the other side is making. 851 00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:35,980 {\an1}You find a little doorway that's been left open just a smidge 852 00:44:36,020 --> 00:44:39,550 {\an1}and that's where you attack and that's where you go in. 853 00:44:39,580 --> 00:44:45,080 NARRATOR: Finally, she was able to follow Sargo's activities again. 854 00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:48,250 {\an1}The decrypted messages laid bare 855 00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:53,280 {\an1}ominous new developments in South America. 856 00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:55,850 GREENFIELD: There is a coup in Argentina, 857 00:44:55,880 --> 00:44:58,480 a fascist coup, 858 00:44:58,520 --> 00:45:02,050 {\an1}in the summer of 1943. 859 00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:08,020 {\an1}At the end of that, Sargo is really on the inside. 860 00:45:08,050 --> 00:45:11,080 {\an1}In Bolivia, again, he is working with people 861 00:45:11,120 --> 00:45:14,380 {\an1}who want to turn the government toward the Nazis, 862 00:45:14,420 --> 00:45:16,550 {\an1}and in December of 1943, 863 00:45:16,580 --> 00:45:20,280 {\an1}lo and behold, there's a fascist coup in Bolivia. 864 00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:24,180 {\an1}And this is scary stuff for the United States. 865 00:45:24,220 --> 00:45:26,280 HOUGHTON: The fear is that the Germans 866 00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:29,550 {\an1}will start a front in South America. 867 00:45:29,580 --> 00:45:32,150 {\an1}This could be a dramatic game changer 868 00:45:32,180 --> 00:45:34,520 {\an1}that could make it very difficult for us 869 00:45:34,550 --> 00:45:35,850 {\an1}to fight the war overseas, 870 00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:38,670 {\an1}because we'd be worriedabout fighting the war at home. 871 00:45:41,250 --> 00:45:43,780 NARRATOR: From her tiny office in Washington, 872 00:45:43,820 --> 00:45:47,150 {\an1}Elizebeth shadowed Sargo's every move. 873 00:45:47,180 --> 00:45:52,220 {\an1}Any which way they turned, his spies were outflanked. 874 00:45:52,250 --> 00:45:56,450 HOUGHTON: In the end, Elizebeth is able to give information to the Allies 875 00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:59,120 {\an1}which allows them to break up the spy ring 876 00:45:59,150 --> 00:46:02,150 {\an1}and do it in such a way that the Germans have no idea 877 00:46:02,180 --> 00:46:04,180 {\an1}that the spy ring was broken up 878 00:46:04,220 --> 00:46:07,320 {\an1}because their codes had been broken. 879 00:46:07,350 --> 00:46:12,650 NARRATOR: German backed revolutions inBolivia and Chile were crushed. 880 00:46:12,680 --> 00:46:16,550 {\an1}Argentina's relationship with Germany splintered. 881 00:46:16,580 --> 00:46:18,020 Within months, 882 00:46:18,050 --> 00:46:22,180 {\an1}the Nazi threat in the Western Hemisphere was eliminated. 883 00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:25,280 {\an1}Sargo went into hiding. 884 00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:29,780 {\an1}He would never rebuild his network again. 885 00:46:33,820 --> 00:46:36,220 {\an1}Elizebeth's work in South America 886 00:46:36,250 --> 00:46:40,350 {\an1}was an astonishing testament to the power of codebreaking. 887 00:46:40,380 --> 00:46:44,850 {\an7}But it would be a private and lonely victory. 888 00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:46,380 {\an7}She had signed a Navy oath 889 00:46:46,420 --> 00:46:49,280 {\an7}promising her silence until death. 890 00:46:49,320 --> 00:46:51,580 {\an7}She could tell no one. 891 00:46:51,620 --> 00:46:53,480 {\an7}Not even William. 892 00:46:53,520 --> 00:46:57,920 {\an1}And she could do nothing as J. Edgar Hoover took credit 893 00:46:57,950 --> 00:47:00,820 {\an1}for her crowning achievement. 894 00:47:00,850 --> 00:47:03,820 {\an1}He took all the decrypts Elizebeth had sent... 895 00:47:03,850 --> 00:47:06,250 {\an1}all 4,000 of them... 896 00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:09,750 {\an1}and had them stamped with FBI identification numbers, 897 00:47:09,780 --> 00:47:13,920 {\an1}erasing Elizebeth and her team from the official record. 898 00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:18,856 {\an7}Elizebeth just had to kind of grin and bear it, 899 00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:21,670 {\an7}and after a while she wasn't grinning so much anymore. 900 00:47:23,620 --> 00:47:25,380 {\an1}It kind of ate at her, 901 00:47:25,420 --> 00:47:28,550 {\an1}but there was very little that she could do. 902 00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:35,920 NARRATOR: In her Christmas card in 1944, she wrote friends 903 00:47:35,950 --> 00:47:39,620 that she was just carrying on a routine Navy job. 904 00:47:39,650 --> 00:47:43,020 {\an1}William added a PS: 905 00:47:43,050 --> 00:47:46,920 {\an1}"Elizebeth was, is, and continues to be 906 00:47:46,950 --> 00:47:50,280 {\an1}the most fascinating woman I've ever known." 907 00:47:54,050 --> 00:47:59,580 ♪ 908 00:47:59,620 --> 00:48:03,580 NARRATOR: World War II ended in August 1945. 909 00:48:03,620 --> 00:48:09,080 A year later, Elizebeth's unit was disbanded. 910 00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:14,020 {\an1}She was 54 years old and out of a job. 911 00:48:14,050 --> 00:48:18,780 {\an1}Codebreaking by pencil and paperhad become a thing of the past. 912 00:48:18,820 --> 00:48:21,720 {\an1}Computers were the future. 913 00:48:21,750 --> 00:48:25,580 GREENFIELD: The post-war era will be likenothing Elizebeth has ever seen, 914 00:48:25,620 --> 00:48:27,450 and she knows that. 915 00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:29,320 {\an1}She knows it's changing. 916 00:48:29,350 --> 00:48:32,380 {\an1}She can see that her era is ending. 917 00:48:33,820 --> 00:48:37,050 NARRATOR: William continued to work for the government. 918 00:48:37,080 --> 00:48:41,280 In the early 1950s, he suffered a series of heart attacks, 919 00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:45,220 and struggled with mental illness. 920 00:48:45,250 --> 00:48:47,020 {\an1}He was so depressed that 921 00:48:47,050 --> 00:48:49,580 {\an1}he was unable to even start his hand to move 922 00:48:49,620 --> 00:48:51,980 {\an1}on a pad of paper at the office, 923 00:48:52,020 --> 00:48:55,680 {\an1}and so Elizebeth would put her hand on top of his 924 00:48:55,720 --> 00:48:58,850 {\an1}and move the pencil for him. 925 00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:00,050 And in that way, 926 00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:03,820 {\an1}he was able to begin to work, begin to draw, 927 00:49:03,850 --> 00:49:09,680 {\an1}begin to think and come to life. 928 00:49:09,720 --> 00:49:13,120 {\an1}To me, that says everything about the Friedmans, 929 00:49:13,150 --> 00:49:15,220 {\an1}who they were, their bond. 930 00:49:16,620 --> 00:49:21,920 NARRATOR: William died of a heart attack on November 2, 1969. 931 00:49:23,720 --> 00:49:29,420 {\an1}Though Elizebeth's career as a codebreaker was long over, 932 00:49:29,450 --> 00:49:31,696 {\an1}codebreaking itself was becoming a critical part 933 00:49:31,720 --> 00:49:34,580 {\an1}of keeping the nation safe. 934 00:49:34,620 --> 00:49:38,880 {\an1}The U.S. government had created the National Security Agency, 935 00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:42,480 {\an1}the NSA, in 1952, 936 00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:45,156 {\an1}and charged it with collecting cryptographic communications 937 00:49:45,180 --> 00:49:48,020 {\an1}and strengthening the nation's codes. 938 00:49:48,050 --> 00:49:50,680 {\an1}It would become the largest, most secretive, 939 00:49:50,720 --> 00:49:55,920 {\an1}and far-reaching arm of U.S. intelligence gathering. 940 00:49:55,950 --> 00:49:57,596 {\an8}HOUGHTON: Even though we're not fighting a shooting war, 941 00:49:57,620 --> 00:50:00,980 {\an1}we are keeping secrets, and a lot of them, 942 00:50:01,020 --> 00:50:02,656 {\an1}and not letting the American public know 943 00:50:02,680 --> 00:50:06,720 {\an1}what the government is doing in its name. 944 00:50:06,750 --> 00:50:08,326 {\an1}Elizebeth felt that it was going too far, 945 00:50:08,350 --> 00:50:11,620 collecting too much information, becoming too intrusive, 946 00:50:11,650 --> 00:50:13,980 {\an1}violating too much privacy. 947 00:50:14,020 --> 00:50:16,926 {\an1}Some of the same themes that will basically pester the NSA 948 00:50:16,950 --> 00:50:19,380 {\an1}for the next several decades. 949 00:50:19,420 --> 00:50:22,226 NARRATOR: Even as intelligence gathering grew into something. 950 00:50:22,250 --> 00:50:25,080 {\an1}Elizebeth could hardly recognize, 951 00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:27,680 {\an1}her methods formed the basis of codebreaking 952 00:50:27,720 --> 00:50:30,250 {\an1}for decades to come. 953 00:50:30,280 --> 00:50:33,280 FAGONE: She helped to create an immensely powerful 954 00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:35,050 {\an1}new science of code breaking. 955 00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:37,450 ♪ 956 00:50:37,480 --> 00:50:40,350 {\an1}And so there's still a good portion of her DNA 957 00:50:40,380 --> 00:50:44,450 {\an1}in codebreaking today, even though it's been mathematized 958 00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:46,420 {\an1}and done on computers. 959 00:50:46,450 --> 00:50:49,880 {\an1}She laid a foundation for what happens 960 00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:55,150 {\an1}at American intelligence agencies every day today. 961 00:50:55,180 --> 00:51:00,950 NARRATOR: Elizebeth struggled in her final years as her savings dried up. 962 00:51:00,980 --> 00:51:07,580 {\an1}She died on October 31, 1980, in a nursing home in New Jersey. 963 00:51:07,620 --> 00:51:11,250 {\an1}She took her secret life to the grave. 964 00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:14,980 {\an1}The government kept the files 965 00:51:15,020 --> 00:51:17,720 {\an1}detailing Elizebeth Friedman's history-making work 966 00:51:17,750 --> 00:51:21,220 {\an1}locked away for 62 years. 967 00:51:21,250 --> 00:51:25,150 In 2008, decades after her death, 968 00:51:25,180 --> 00:51:28,480 they were finally declassified. 969 00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:32,750 GREENFIELD: If we could miss something as big as Elizebeth, 970 00:51:32,780 --> 00:51:36,550 who is crucial in two world wars, 971 00:51:36,580 --> 00:51:39,520 {\an1}who fights crime, who fights the mob, 972 00:51:39,550 --> 00:51:41,880 {\an1}if we missed her, 973 00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:44,880 {\an1}who else are we missing? 974 00:51:49,850 --> 00:51:54,350 ♪ 975 00:52:03,180 --> 00:52:07,650 ♪ 976 00:52:12,220 --> 00:52:15,120 {\an8}ANNOUNCER: "American Experience: The Codebreaker" 977 00:52:15,150 --> 00:52:16,950 {\an7}is available on DVD. 978 00:52:16,980 --> 00:52:21,820 {\an7}To order, visit ShopPBS or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS. 979 00:52:21,850 --> 00:52:24,350 {\an7}"American Experience" is also available 980 00:52:24,380 --> 00:52:28,020 {\an7}with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video. 981 00:52:28,050 --> 00:52:33,280 ♪ 982 00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:43,720 ♪